december 2021 (pt. 2)
mike tries to watch the movies of 2021 (but most of them aren't on streaming yet?)
biweekly newsletter listing all the music, movies, books, and, TV I, mike, have experienced for the first time over the past two weeks and also the things I have thought about them. again, I am mike
2021 releases
allison lorenzen, tender much love to midwife (who is featured on literally half of the tracks on this album and almost certainly makes them even cooler) but AL’s kinda swooping in here and doing whatever you wanna call that sound in a way that I think is much cooler, even setting aside the explicit julee cruiseiness of the opener and the maybe even more explicit enyaisms of ‘backwards.’ ffo grouper and julia holter, as recommended by someone who does not listen to grouper of JH. so beautiful bro
failure, wild type droid never even considered this band existed outside of ‘saturday saviour’ but evidently they have entire albums out there in the world. better moments here feel like hum and/or spiritualized in that both are cool ’90s bands I barely have any context for (in addition to this LP blending that grungy shoegaze sound with dreamy space rock (eh maybe the latter’s just on ‘half moon’), worse moments feel like the terrible genre ‘alternative rock’ which, in the 2000s, seemed to congeal around various bastardizations of cool non-mainstream rock bands. pretty sure this is the only album that came out in december so
older albums
cocteau twins, treasure (1984) haha ok guys you got me seriously though what are they SAYING like I know that’s the whole joke with this band but this is literally the audio equivalent of this meme. honestly at this point I am too proud to actually google whether the lyrics are gibberish or like……gaelic?? is there actually any crossover with simlish? like babe what is it what is on your mind
debby friday, terror: a mix/tape (2018) became a debby completionist by purchasing this EP, which is simply a few minutes of halloween-ambient. highly recommend you become a debby completionist, tho if you don’t host halloween parties you can skip this one
health, //disco (2008) love how this band has dropped like a million albums but only four of them are normal and not, like, the max payne OST or collabs with soccer mommy. band’s first non-album album, regrettably just a collection of mostly interchangeable electroclash versions of the same couple songs from their s/t c/o pictureplane, cryst*l c*stl*s, CFCF, etc. curious to see when the disco releases transition from being Things Mike Does Not Like into Things Mike Very Much Does Like, as is the case with disco4 :: part 1 (2020), stay tuned, I guess, idk, idc
wildhoney, seventeen forever (2014) wispy azz dream pop EP. either the makthaverskan to kindling’s westkust or vice versa, not quite sure yet. different from mudhoney as far as I know
hate to end the year on a bummer note but feel like I need to mention that a couple of the most horrific firsthand accounts of sexual violence I’ve read lately (or possibly ever) have circulated shortly after I highlighted the abuser in the ’letter—if, by any chance, you actually use these emails as a source for recommendations and you’ve bought and/or streamed music by dave collis (slow mass, my dad) or alexis marshall (daughters), or even if you haven’t, please consider supporting their victims here and here
movies
all light, everywhere dir. theo anthony (2021) doc that evidently began with theo filming high school students’ video projects but which somehow ends up at a community meeting where a guy earnestly suggests we replace god with 24/7 police-backed aerial cameras deployed by a private contractor. interesting parallels made between the developments of firearms and photography that feel way too poetic to not have been the subject of any movie I’m aware of prior to this. also contemplates the shortcomings and literal blindspots of police body cams (which, as the narrator notes, record what happens to the officers and not what the officers do) while looking at how PDs have embraced the technology and pitch it to their officers as an asset rather than a symbol of their irresponsibility, which it is, and how—as with the aforementioned aerial cam—PDs are scheming ways to weaponize surveillance and refract that shame upon communities. the phrase ‘smart weapons’ was used by the body cam manufacturer guy but I’m not even gonna touch that. cool they got access to a real-life scramble suit for this
the power of the dog dir. jane campion (2021) movie about what if a guy could be jealous, and what if he acted rudely, erratically, schemily due to this feeling. overwhelming barrage of genre I’m disinterested in, male leads I’ve never found appealing, and a director whose movies I’ve never connected with but I appreciate JC working to revisionize the western with queer and toxic-masculine storylines. jess plemmons is kinda just on cruise control, k-dunst does her melancholia spiraling-literally-moments-after-getting-married thing, cody smith-mcafee continues to be bullied by hollywood into playing a kid that gets bullied, even as a grown man, benjamin cumberland from marvel’s mister weird or whatever probably does what he does in that. like half the movie is that searchers doorway silhouette shot, while jonny g’s score provides the exact same feeling-kind-of-uneasy-at-the-turn-of-the-century vibe as the one he did for that movie about there being blood. notably the first film to be made since hollywood put a new rule into effect where screen couples are only allowed to kiss if the actors are couples irl
procession dir. robert greene I remember watching dick johnson is dead last year and thinking ‘damn I hope we get a new wave of doc films that pick up fiction films’ slack and provide meaningful stories told extremely experimentally and which will emotionally decimate its audience’ and here we are! doc that follows middle-aged survivors of childhood sexual assault within the catholic church as they make short films about their experiences as a way of finally confronting them. in addition to thinking about how insanely fucked it is that rampant sexual abuse of minors by those in power in the catholic church is on par with school shootings as just like…..a thing that happens in our world that we merely hope does not happen—and even that it’s become a common punchline in our culture—I couldn’t help thinking about how self-serving and unconscionable these awful hollywood movies about it are (spotlight? was that what that one was about? idfk). feels good to be reminded of the healing power film can have when it’s in the right hands, which are frequently those far outside of h-wood
there is no evil dir. mohammed rasoulof (2020) almost certainly nothing punker than iran’s exportation of movies filmed without the government’s knowledge, made by guys who were imprisoned for their previous films criticizing the government and who are no longer permitted to leave the country because of them, and which become banned as soon as the government learns about their existence. this one’s a series of four shorts that intertwine the everyday lives of regular folks and their assigned roles as trigger fingers in capital punishment cases, slowly and subtly unraveling mundane storylines until the ‘oh shit’ moment hits and you feel a lil sick to your stomach. spoiler alert, there is evil!
ugh ok one more
the santa clause dir. john pasquin (1994) aight I’m guessing most of you have seen the santa clause (1994) so instead of explaining it to you let me instead outline all the ways this movie feels less made for kids and more targeted at their newly divorced dads who’ve just achieved custody of their kid every other weekend (and who spend their other weekends saying to their male friends that their ex is a ‘bitch’):
(1) movie about a divorced guy trying to win over his kid in a custody battle, obv, though somehow those of us not in the situation outlined above are meant to side with tim allen (corporate type who catcalls younger women) rather than his ex’s new man (a with-it psychologist who rocks killer sweaters)
(2) most of the movie’s just tim allen emphatically arguing about his perception of a shared event as if it’s the objective truth, slowly accepting that he’s wrong
(3) feels like a fantasy about finding a way of living off the grid—away from the people you were once close with in your life but now feel awkward and ashamed to be around due to your situation—in a setting where you’re accepted by and fit in among much younger people
(4) in addition to all the legalese making its way into the script (and film title) they literally cast a guy named ‘judge’?
TV
succession s3 (2021) idk man I don’t have anything to add to the discourse. I will say that I’ve been playing a lot of mario party lately and this season felt particularly like the type of dumb-luck crabs-in-a-bucketism the universe of those games is built upon. also spent a lot of time this season being surprised that logan doesn’t shout at roman more? isn’t that weird? that guy’s always just hanging around muttering weird shit and logan’s just like yep ok whatever and then a woman speaks and he’s like ‘fuck off!’ but going back to video games, the last 15 mins or so of the season also felt like all of the tony hawk games post-pro skater when they all had narratives about putting aside your differences with your enemies to band together and make a skate tape to burn your real nemesis or whatever. whispering ‘couple of cool guys having some disgusting fun’ every time I connect with the homies from now on
books
go by john clellon holmes (1952) novel about some guys running around late-’40s NYC looking for each other so they can invite each other to parties where they can threateningly announce to everyone that they’re moving out west. feels like buried in all the aimless subplots there’s a compelling anxiety about the shame of unpublished writing and a meditation on physical infidelity in a relationship vs. mental, but it doesn’t quite seem like the author was aware of it? JCH is a proto-beat writer doing the thinly-veiled-fiction thing writing about kerouac, ginsberg, et al in the most blandly objective way imaginable, so everything that came after is kinda like the fraiser or whatever to this book’s cheers. not rly interested in those beat guys anymore, but I would recommend joyce johnson’s books if you’re looking for something fairly objective on these folks that isn’t also dry as sin. read this book on accident lol—thought it was something else but after I realized it wasn’t while one page in I figured I was committed to the next 300